I’ve been to many different grocery stores, Shop Rite, ACME, Trader Joe’s and even Dollar Tree Stores along with the food section at Target and Walmart but I’ve never been able to find pear slices or halves in a resealable jar. They all have pears in cans but not in jars. I can find peaches in jars, I can find fruit cocktails in a jar, I can even find mangos in a jar. But I have yet to find any type of pear in a jar.

Why is that? Am I looking in the wrong places? Are grocery stores the wrong places to look? Is there some specialty store where I should be looking?

So, why don’t the fruit producers have pears in a jar? Are pears not a fruit? They can put diced, slices, and halves of peaches in jars. Also, pineapple chunks, slices, and diced in jars. They even provide maraschino cherries in a jar.

Why pears in a jar? Convenience. What if I wanted a slice or two, or maybe just one half. With a jar I can take what I want and reseal the container with the unused portion. With a can I can’t reseal it, I have use all of it. Sure, I can cover the open top with aluminum foil or plastic wrap. This, however, does not completely seal the container and will still cause a mess if it tips over.

So, if anyone knows where I could buy pears in a jar I’d appreciate hearing from you.

Did you ever notice that most of products sale price increases considerably once the manufacturer places the word “Healthy” on the label? Take a well known soup manufacturer. Just look at s specific soup type…tomatoe soup. They sell a regular brand and a “healthy” brand. The “healthy” brand sells for twice the price of the regular brand. Lets look at some specific nutritional items from the label. These items are the ones we are told that we need to control and keep to a minimum:

Regular brand vs Healthy brand

– Regular Healthy Diff %chg

Calories 90 90 0 0%

Fat 0g 1.5g +1.5g +100%

Cholesterol 0g 0g 0g 0%

Sodium 480mg 410mg -70mg -15%

Carbohydrates 20g 17g -3g -15%

Sugar 12g 10g -2g -17%

OK, let’s look at the numbers. How much healthier is the company’s “healthy” brand…really. Does reducing the sodium content by 70mg (15%) make the product “healthy”? It seems that companies play games with our minds and words. Who determined that a 15% reduction made a product healthy and justified doubling the price for it? I thought fat should be avoided and minimized? Wouldn’t the regular brand be considered healthier because it has no fat content while the “healthy” brand has 1.5g? How much difference does it make to a person on a low-salt diet to save 70mg? Could you tell the difference? You draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that majority of companies practice market trickery. They trick you to believe that you are paying more for a better product and that the higher price you are paying for added value. I don’t believe you are. If the medical field that cow manure was healthy for you and that you should use 1 pound a day, you’d see some company out their jack up the price of cow manure a thousand-fold. They’d also justify it by stating the price was a factor of supply and demand, that more people were buying it and that they wasn’t enough supply. But did you ever notice…supplies NEVER catch up with demand?

Remember, we are no longer living in a free market society as purported by The Powers To Be or even outlined in text books. We are all now unwilling participants in Gotcha Capitalism and allow corporations to trick us into buying their higher priced products.

Television does not lack stupid commercials. There are so many out there. But one that is being aired during this Christmas season I find very insulting. That is one that is put out by one of the auto makers (I’m not going to name it or the auto model) that opens with Santa and one of his elves in front of a PC or Notebook video chatting with a young boy of 8 to 10 years of age. Essentially, Santa tells the boy that he has been good and would receive an extra present and proceeds to ask the boy what he wants. Santa goes on to name a few items that a normal 8 to 10 year old would want. But does this boy want those items? Oh, no. This boy asks for a car. And it just so happens to be the cat that this auto maker manufactures. The boy goes on to name the features and praises the car.

Come on!!! I’m going to run right out and buy this cat because some 8 to 10 year “convinced” me about the car? I don’t think so. How many cars has this boy owned? How many has he been responsible to maintain? How many miles has he driven. No, what this commercial has convinced me to do is never buy this car because the auto maker believes that I am an idiot without any functioning brain cells and will buy a car on the basis of some talking points from a child.

On a similar note, another automobile commercial that came in a close second as the stupidest auto commercial is one where we see a woman getting out of her car after being out on Black Friday looking all haggard and beat. Then we see her neighbor come over and comment on her condition. The first woman (the shopper) agrees but tells her neighbor how much she saved. The neighbor then tells the woman that she saved thousands by purchasing a certain vehicle. The auto maker wants the idiot in us to believe that shopping is the same as buying a vehicle for herself. The shopper bought items for other people (the fact that she got up early to partake in the Black Friday hysteria is another exercise in idiocy, but that is for another blog) and neighbor bought an SUV for herself. Hey, automakers, NOT the same!

I know that the automakers are just looking to drive business and make sales but do it in such a way as to not to insult our intelligence. You want to increase sales? Try lower the overinflated prices of your product. Dealers, be happy with a reasonable profit. Automakers, try trimming the salaries of some of the over-paid & underworked executives so as to lower the overall overhead. I’m not referring to the line workers because they actually add value to the product.

There are other stupid commercials out there, but I found the one with the young boy pushing for a new car especially insulting.